It is known that in the wrapping machine for chocolates and similar products with traditional wrapping styles the wrapping material must move parallely to the product short side, which is moved along a direction parallel to the product long side for stability need. For this reason, usually the feeding devices, including one or more belts, are positioned perpendicularly to the product flow on the machine and, therefore, transversally with respect to the latter.
The main drawback of said devices consists in that their transversal position makes difficult the access to the maintenance points, positioned at opposite sides of said device, reducing the timeliness of the operator's intervention, particularly in case the operator must control several wrapping machines, parallely positioned in an automatic feeding line, forcing to have an operator for each machine.
There are known feeding devices which allow to feed the products with the long side parallel to the machine by means of one or more storage belt, from which the products are transferred, for instance by pushers, to a disk provided with housing slots, which rotates said products of 90°, in order to correctly orientate for picking or transferring them to the following machine working station.
The main drawback of said known device consists in the mechanical stresses, which the pushers, or the like, exert on the products, and in the unavoidable collisions thereof against the housing slot walls, during the 90° rotation working cycles. Said stresses can damage products, with possible fragment detachments that create unwanted dirt accumulation on the machine members.
Other drawback of the above described devices consists in that, for high production speeds, the products tend to slip on the storage belt, till they miss their correct positioning in the picking or transfer zone within the machine cycle, in such a way causing idle cycles with consequent reduction of machine production.